The online classroom of UH 300-002, Andy Duncan's fall 2010 science fiction seminar in the Honors College of the University of Alabama.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Copy Rights

So, I have to ask what you guys think of Cory Doctorow's view of copyright laws.

I personally completely agree with most of his views. I don't think anyone should be allowed to take another person's creation and make money off it without sharing the wealth and credit. I'm studying to become a teacher and we are constantly drilled about copy right laws. If we find a picture we really like that ties into our lesson plan, we can't use it more than once and we most certainly can't post our notes from that lesson on-line without permission. But I'm not using that picture for personal gain or profit, I'm using it to teach, so what's the problem?

And now to tie this more into sci fi: How do you think copy write laws will change as our technology becomes more advanced? Do you think Cory Doctorow is headed in the right direction? Or do you foresee problems with making more information freely open to the public?

I agree, Courtney, that the lesson plan thing is rather ridiculous, especially because we're never claiming credit for the picture. If we show our classes a picture of an Antarctic base, we're not claiming that we actually went out and took the picture. We just want to show the class what Antarctica looks like.

However, the internet seems to stretching copyright laws at the very least. Fanfiction seems to be a good examples of this. So long as you actively deny ownership of the ideas behind your work, I don't think you can be sued. And I doubt that the person who's photo you're using in a lesson plan is ever going to track you down.

The internet seems to have made copyright laws a very grey area, but I don't know how much more they'll change.

They have already changed some. The introduction of the GPL and GNU licences is fairly recent. The main problem I foresee is the tightening of the laws and the introduction of licences that only benefit huge corporations. I don't recall off the top of my head where I read this, but a few years ago I read that the big companies were trying to get rid of the "your made it you own it" copyright. Basically any art, literature, any thing, that you put online had to be registered with some big catalog for a fee. The problem is that artists and writers who are rather prolific would have to pay a fee each time they posted something. This also meant that anything posted online without being registered was fair game. I don't know if the big guys are still trying for it, but I'll see if I can dig up more info.